Theories and Research on Oral Reading Fluency: What Is Needed PDF

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ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 379-388, April 2020 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1004.05 Theories and Research on Oral Reading Fluency: What Is Needed? Zainab R. Aldhanhani The British University in Dubai, United Arab Emirates Emad A. S. Abu-Ayyash...

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ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 379-388, April 2020 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1004.05

Theories and Research on Oral Reading Fluency: What Is Needed? Zainab R. Aldhanhani The British University in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Emad A. S. Abu-Ayyash The British University in Dubai, United Arab Emirates Abstract—Oral reading fluency skill is considered to be the bridge to reading comprehension. However, it has been neglected in many English reading programs despite the fact that different theories (including behaviorism, information processing model theory, automaticity theory, and Ehri and McCormick’s word learning theory) have shed light on this skill. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to review theories, studies and practices relevant to this skill. This study has two aims: (1) to identify the theories underpinning oral reading strategies and (2) to identify the gap in research so far conducted on oral reading fluency. Various reading-aloud techniques and assessment methods are presented in this study. Moreover, some factors that affect students’ oral reading fluency are illustrated. Significantly, the practices that this study investigates and presents concerning teaching and assessing oral reading fluency might give an inspiration for the policymakers and curriculum designers to integrate oral reading fluency in their reading programs. Index Terms—oral reading fluency, theories, reading-aloud instructions, assessment methods, factors affecting oral reading fluency.

I. INTRODUCTION Oral reading fluency is a key skill, which is a prerequisite for comprehension as emphasized by Tindal et al. (2016) and Rasinski (2014). They believe that fluency as a skill feeds into comprehension, which is the ultimate goal of reading. According to DiSalle and Rasinski (2017), 90% of comprehension problems are due to the deficiency in oral fluency. Thus, students who have poor reading fluency in their early stage of academic life will likely have problems in later academic stages. For this reason, it is essential to build and develop literacy skills in the early learning stage (Rasinski 2014). However, this has been neglected in many English learning programmes in various countries. Investigating oral reading fluency theoretically and through the literature is essential for proposing instructions and implications. In response, this study provides an overview of the instructional reading strategies for oral reading fluency and the assessment techniques employed in the literature. It also provides details about the factors that affect students' oral reading fluency. It would be fair to say that all of the existing studies relating to oral reading fluency have investigated the effects of one or two oral reading-aloud strategies on students' oral fluency. Some of them have examined and discussed one assessment measure whilst others have investigated one or more factors that affect students' oral reading fluency. It is evident that there is presently no research covering the areas which this study aims to investigate. Furthermore, no studies have been found to suggest or provide a comprehensive model that builds and supports oral reading fluency. Hence, this study has clearly addressed a gap in the literature concerning different issues relating to oral reading fluency and would therefore, most certainly add value to the growing literature in oral reading fluency by presenting the issue as comprehensively as possible. In light of this, the objectives of the present paper are: a) to identify the theories underpinning oral reading strategies b) to identify the gap in research so far conducted on oral reading fluency with the aim of recommending areas for future studies. Defining oral reading fluency has been a key issue for many educators and scholars alike. The reason for this is that oral reading fluency involves identifying a host of different aspects in a fixed time, such as the number of: correct words, incorrect words, pauses, repetition of words or phrases and finally mean length of utterance (Rasinski 2014). However, based on current research perspectives, there is a common definition for oral reading fluency, which is the ability to read aloud a text accurately with natural speed (Rasinski 2009; DiSalle & Rasinski 2017; Samuels 2007). Hence, it is necessary to highlight that Padak and Rasinski (2008) and Samuels (2007) identified three main components of oral reading fluency which are accuracy, automaticity, and prosody. Defining these three terms is imperative to understanding how oral reading fluency should be addressed. Accuracy is the ability to decode words precisely. First and foremost, for fluent readers to read accurately, they must identify individual words. This identification requires learning the alphabetic principle, which involves letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes). In addition, decoding isolated words, such as sight words, high-frequency words,

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and irregular words is paramount. Mastering the previous knowledge allows accurate word identification, which happens instantaneously (Rasinski 2014). Automaticity, on the other hand, refers to recognising and decoding words effortlessly (Rasinski 2014; Samuels 2007). It depends on the students’ knowledge of alphabetic principles and vocabulary (Ehri & McCormick 1998). Reading becomes automatic once readers master accuracy. Therefore, automaticity and accuracy are closely related. It is proven that readers’ cognitive load is reduced as automaticity and accuracy are increased (Samuels 1974). Consequently, the cognitive resources will be devoted to comprehension. It is also believed that the more errors students make in reading accuracy, the less textual information they grasp (Lahmann, Steinkrauss & Schmid 2017). Hence, both accuracy and automaticity enhance effective reading comprehension. It is also reported that automaticity or accuracy alone is not sufficient to determine students' oral reading fluency (Rasinski 2014). For instance, students might read separate words accurately and rapidly. However, when they read a connected text, they might find it difficult to read at the same level of accuracy and speed. Moreover, reading too quickly might not allow students to comprehend (Rasinski, Rikli, & Johnston 2009). In fact, to reach a proper level of text comprehension, students should have accurate word recognition (Samuels 2007). The last component of fluency is prosody, which refers to reading smoothly with expression and intonation that presents the meaning and comprehension of connected text (Rasinski, Rikli, & Johnston 2009). In some studies, prosody is called expression. Prosody involves reading with the pitch, tone, volume, and rhythm. It also includes chunking words or phrases together and emphasising certain phrases (Padak & Rasinski 2008). Numerous studies have proven that reading orally with expression helps the reader to build and develop his/her own comprehension skills, the meaning of the text, and speaking skills (Rasinski, Rikli, & Johnston 2009). Moreover, though a positive relationship between prosody and comprehension was reported in those studies as mentioned earlier, the reliability data for measuring students’ prosody was an issue. In fact, there is no valid and reliable measure created yet to measure students’ prosody (Haskins & Aleccia 2014; Sarris & Dimakos 2015). On the other hand, there are some available valid and reliable measures for both accuracy and automaticity (Rasinski 2004). II. THEORIES AND ORAL READING FLUENCY Various theories shed light on reading fluency particularly reading-aloud strategies which are behaviourism, information processing model theory, automaticity theory, and Ehri and McCormick word learning theory. The following sections present theories views on building oral reading fluency and instructional implication for each theory. A. Behaviourism Behaviourism is a well-known theory that focuses on the changing of behaviour over a period of time. For behaviourists, information is transferred and conveyed from a knowledgeable person, teacher, to a less knowledgeable source, student (Zuriff 1985). In education, behaviourism can inform literacy instructions meaningfully by leading teachers to use specific strategies and assessment methods. In essence, it is an important theory that is associated with direct instructions and implications for reading that could improve the students’ achievement (Tracey & Morrow 2012). Generally, three basic behavioural theories contribute to behaviourism; classical conditioning, connectionism, and operant conditioning. These three theories focus on breaking down the complex task, in this case reading, into smaller components. For instance, Tracey and Morrow (2012) claimed that reading components are categorised into five categories, which are visual discrimination, auditory discrimination, left-to-right progression during reading, vocabulary and finally, comprehension. These components have some sub-skills. For example, for auditory discrimination, there are sub-skills including phonics, sight words, and blending. Each one of these sub-skills requires a response and feedback. To elaborate, a teacher asks a student to pronounce a word. If the student does it correctly, then the teacher needs to give quick feedback. However, if the student pronounces the word incorrectly, the teacher should correct the student’s pronunciation. This can happen by providing sufficient opportunities to pronounce the word repeatedly until the student has perfected it. This is strongly related to oral reading fluency whereby feedback is a requirement to help students improve their reading fluency. It is also emphasised by Rasinski (2014), Padak and Rasinski (2008) and Rasinski and Padak (2000). They believed and insisted on the significance of providing students with appropriate guidance and feedback to help them build their reading fluency. Furthermore, the role of feedback in teaching and assessing reading fluency was stressed by many other researchers (Cummings, Park & Schaper 2013; Dewey et al. 2015). Significantly, guided reading, direct instruction, practice, and the repeated reading approaches for LaBerge and Samuels (1974) are examples of the most influential reading strategies that are emphasised by a behaviourism perspective (Tracey & Morrow 2012). Usually, the guided reading strategy is used more with younger students: kindergarten to grade two levels. For direct instruction, the teacher knows the sub-skills that students need to develop. Therefore, the teacher is responsible for the students’ learning by finding out their strengths and weaknesses. Then, the teacher can start teaching and building learners’ reading sub-skills directly and explicitly to students as phonics, sight words, high-frequency words and blending words. The teacher has to provide students with lots of practice to acquire the previous sub-skills. This is also stressed by Padak and Rasinski (2008). Padak and Rasinski clearly stated that to start teaching the basic reading skills at an early level is essential to building a good foundation for reading skills. Al© 2020 ACADEMY PUBLICATION

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Kharusi (2014) claimed that using direct instructions and practice helped students greatly to increase their potential reading fluency. It is important to note that teachers’ knowledge is potentially important to building students’ reading skills. As stated previously, behaviourists believe that information is transferred from a knowledgeable person to a less knowledgeable source. Moreover, the behaviourism theory focuses on measuring the change in behaviour objectively. With respect to oral reading fluency, students must be assessed on reading skills, such as phonics, fluency, and comprehension. It is the teacher’s job to set measurable behavioural objectives to assess students. Although the behaviourism theory points at different reading-aloud methods and the role of feedback, it is criticized harshly. For example, behaviourism views the learner, reader, as a passive recipient of information in the text. Readers’ knowledge and experience do not matter in this theory. Readers are only responding to stimuli. Only perceptual information and the decoding process are significant to this theory. Needless to mention that behaviourists place great attention on the final product or the output, regardless of the processes in learners’ brains. Therefore, behaviourism is criticised harshly for this issue. Behaviourism also receives tough criticism because it does not explain how the mind interferes in the processing of information. As a response to the previous shortcomings, there was a major shift towards a cognitive sciences paradigm. B. Information Processing Model Theory In the cognitive science paradigm, scientists and psycholinguists began to focus on how a language could be built and developed in students’ brains. One of the cognitive processing models is called the “information processing model”. Based on the information processing model (Slavin 2002), oral reading fluency is addressed through various systems that lead readers to engage in specific skills, such as recognising letters and sounds rapidly and retrieving knowledge that is stored in the long-term memory. The brain has a specific capacity for daily tasks. If the students use a significant portion of this capacity and amount of time to read and decode words, then a small capacity and less time will be left and devoted to meaning and comprehension. Thus, if the students learn to read fluently at an early stage, then a big portion of the brain’s capacity will be devoted to making sense of the meaning of the text. This model has three types of memories: sensory memory, short-term memory, which is also called working memory, and long-term memory. When readers see pictures or printed words in a text their sensory memory retains the data. When they read, the information is stored in the short-term memory for thirty-seconds approximately. Certainly, information cannot stay too long in the short-term memory, which has a limited capacity for information. Readers forget the information quickly if they do not encode by rehearsing the information. If they rehearse, in this case, they read aloud many times, information will move into the long-term memory, which has an unlimited capacity over a long period of time. Therefore, teachers have to help students improve their memories by motivating and allowing them to practice to encode data into their long-term memory. This theory promotes reading practice, repeated reading, assisted reading, and rhyming methods as a way to encode data, in this case, recognition of letters, sounds, sight words, and high-frequency words. Unfortunately, this model as the behaviourism theory has received some criticism. For example, this model views the human mind like a computer or machine, which processes information. Readers receive input or information, i.e. a text. Then, they process the text by reading it and finally, they deliver the output or behavioural response, which the behaviourism theory focuses on. Although this model believes that humans are like computers, it stresses on the three types of memory and how to address any issue considering them, which is clarified earlier. It also tells us that older children have a greater capacity in working memory (Slavin 2002). Therefore, building oral reading fluency should begin at an early level. C. Automaticity Theory Automaticity theory is a famous theory in the reading fluency field (Samuels 2007) that focuses highly on word recognition. For the automaticity theory, reading fluency is identified as the ability to decode and comprehend a text at the same time (Samuels 2007). As pointed by Tracey and Morrow (2012), reading text has many sub-skills (or processes) such as recognising letters, associating sounds with the letters, blending, segmenting, chunking, skimming, and scanning. However, there are three basic processes that all readers go through during the reading of a text, which are decoding, comprehension, and attention (Samuels 2007; Tracey & Morrow, 2012). Interestingly, the last one, attention, refers to how much focus and energy readers give to a text when they process the information for comprehension. The more attention one gives to decoding, the less attention one gives to comprehension. Therefore, Samuels (1974) designed a repeated reading strategy based on the automaticity theory. The repeated reading strategy helps students in reducing the capacity for attention and cognition given to decoding a text. Accordingly, the capacity allocated for attention and cognition for higher level processes, such as reading comprehension, will be increased. Fig 1 represents the role of automaticity theory in the working memory of both fluent and less fluent readers.

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Figure1: The role of automaticity theory in working memory of both fluent and less fluent readers (Adams 2012)

LaBerge and Samuels (1974) theory of automaticity is a bottom-up serial stage model of reading. This means that readers should master the lower level processes to reach to the higher level processes. To certify that, LaBerge and Samuels (1974) believed that teachers should ensure that students recognise all the letters in the early stage of reading through repeated reading. Then, the students can focus on the sounds that the letters make, which are developed later at the blending stage. Teachers can use repeated reading, readers theatre, paired reading, choral reading, modeling reading and assisted reading by recorded audio texts approaches in teaching reading fluency. Significantly, the roles of drilling, repetition, and error correction are vital in the previous approaches. In fact, the key to all these approaches is practice, which improves the speed of reading. Evidently, the automaticity theory helps to find those who have problems in reading speed (Pikulski & Chard 2005). The automaticity theory does not believe that readers have a deficit in memory. It is about a lack of attention given to texts. To fix this issue of lacking attention, the automaticity theory promotes using easier texts as a remedy with students, which would help them develop their automatic reading (Samuels 1979). Moreover, Samuels recommended that teachers should use a rubric to evaluate students’ reading progress. Using self-assessment and peer assessment techniques is also endorsed by this theory to help students discovering their own strengths and weaknesses. Similar to the previous theories mentioned, this theory has received negative criticism due to the insufficient explanation. For instance, this theory does not shed light or explain how prosody, a significant component of oral reading fluency (Samuels 2007), can be improved. Therefore, it is criticised for neglecting prosody. Also, though this theory encourages teachers to use easier texts with struggling readers, it does not discuss the readability and the suitability of texts for certain levels. Finally, since this method relies on practice and drilling, therefore, it takes a lot of class time to ensure students’ success. However, usually teachers are tied to the course syllabus to deliver on time. Therefore, it is not practical for many teachers. D. Ehri and McCormick Word Learning Theory Ehri (1995) word learning theory is another widely recognised theory in the field of reading fluency. Her theory presents the reading stages that students go through to achieve reading fluency. Ehri (1995) identified four stages for the development of reading words, which are pre-alphabetic (preschool), partial-alphabetic (kindergarten), full-alphabetic (first grade), and consolidated-alphabetic (second grade). However, later Ehri and McCormick (1998) identified one more phase, which is automatic-alphabetic (beyond second grade). Each of these stages has its own characteristics, which are used to develop instructional implications for students to read words fluently. The...